Incredibly frustrating and difficult to follow, especially since I really enjoyed parmenides concept of the one from a different book ( )

Maybe I should have just stuck with Green Eggs and Ham. I’m not really qualified to rate the book, and I didn’t try to struggle through many of the logic puzzles, though the Parmenides seems to be as much about ontology and to some extent language (or at least the verb “to be”) as it is about valid argument. And as is characteristic with Plato, it’s about considerably more, famously presenting serious and unresolved challenges to his Theory of Forms – part epistemology, part ontology, part everything else – after which it goes through a series of mazes about the One and the Many. Fun, fun, fun. Mary Louise Gill’s introduction is very good, but I have the nagging sense that she misses something. I sometimes wonder what Plato would have thought of Aristotle’s formal logic – certainly a great advance, and the Parmenides may be its most important forerunner, but Plato is almost Aristotle’s opposite in that he systematically avoids systematizing anything. In spite of his having a more mathematical mind than Aristotle, Plato seems so close to developing a formal logic here but refuses to do so. Maybe he’s unable to or just didn’t get there. But I tend to think he’s uninclined and not oriented towards formalizing logic as Aristotle does. Plato was also more of a mystic than Aristotle, which I think has some relevance to this question.

In Aristotle’s defense, his logic can be seen as serving his metaphysical vision about the essential comprehensibility of the cosmos, with man and his rationality being a product of that cosmos, and with man having an essential “desire to understand,” as he says at the beginning of his Metaphysics. Aristotle’s formal logic is both a means for investigating the comprehensible cosmos and a demonstration of the rationality of the cosmos. Whether he’s correct and whether (or to what extent) his logic succeeds are open questions. It seems Plato would have largely agreed with Aristotle’s metaphysical vision, at least as I’ve described it, but I suspect he might have considered Aristotle’s logic too reductive and exclusive. Our strengths are often also our weaknesses. One of Aristotle’s strengths is that he frequently doesn’t try to completely prove his point to the exclusion of all alternatives, but instead presents a case so compelling (he thinks) that he believes it will be thoroughly convincing, leaving alternatives to fend for themselves. Plato, on the other hand, sometimes tries to be comprehensive, but in those situations he’s typically too wise to try to be definitive using rational argument, relying on myth or analogy, or on the ambiguity that’s possible in the dialogue form, or leaving arguments incomplete or very likely knowing they have unresolved flaws. (Parmenides is the outstanding example of this, regarding the Theory of Forms. I don’t think Plato abandoned the theory as some have thought; it seems he honestly investigated it, exposed and analyzed difficulties, left problems open that he couldn’t solve, but continued holding to it. I believe his later works pretty strongly imply this.)

I suspect Plato would have been uncomfortable with an exclusive, definitive formal logic. It might not be possible for man to develop a perfect system of logic, and it seems to imply an unreal separation of the rational from other parts of the soul (as both Plato and Aristotle in general conceived the soul). And if this is unreal for the soul, it’s unreal for the cosmos (as Aristotle has the two intimately related and corresponding to one another). Can a statement about something that’s supposed to exist be dealt with properly using rationality alone? Can rationality alone ensure that a statement is valid, much less cogent? Are unqualified conclusions about validity and cogency legitimate? Is it appropriate and ultimately is it truly meaningful to isolate statements the way Aristotle does in his syllogisms? Do they accurately represent anything that exists? Formal logic is linear, pure, exact, reducible to very simple components, at times purportedly incontrovertible in its conclusions. Does this correspond with the human soul or the cosmos as they really are? Another possible problem is that Aristotle’s logic seems to operate contrary to Plato’s apparent conception of philosophy as necessarily and essentially dialectical – a search for truth involving two or more souls in an active relationship. (Whether this is a definite or complete doctrine of Plato’s is questionable; at a minimum he surely would have also included isolated individual contemplation. And though he clearly considers active dialectic to be very important, the late works seem to move away from this position.) Also, isn’t Aristotle’s metaphysical vision most fundamentally about an active and intimate relationship between man and the cosmos? I could be completely wrong suspecting Plato would have had serious reservations about Aristotle’s logic, though I can’t help thinking he would have at least sought to qualify it. Of course we’ll never hear Plato and Aristotle discuss the Parmenides and Aristotle’s logic, but wouldn’t it be fascinating? (Okay, maybe not for everybody.)
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Much of the fun in reading Plato is trying to unpack the layers of meaning and intent in the dialogue schema. The set-up, the literary presentation, the philosophical probing—all contribute to the richness of the work.

Plato peopled his works with philosophical vagabonds, placing them in various settings, coming into town or leaving, attending festivals, joining processionals, finishing meals and staying up late. Characters were sometimes emblems or foils or red herrings. For Parmenides, travelers from Clazomenae arrive in Athens looking for Antiphon, who they have heard was an acquaintance of Pythodorus (a friend of Zeno of Elea), who is known to have related to Antiphon an account of a conversation between Zeno, Parmenides and Socrates that took place many years before. According to the narrator Cephalus, Antiphon in his youth made a careful study of the writings of Zeno but has since abandoned philosophy for equestrian sports. Nonetheless, Cephalus agrees to fetch Antiphon so that the visitors can hear his account. This deliciously convoluted set-up to the dialogue takes us across the contemporary Greek world from southern Italy to the Ionian coast (with the Athenian Agora as a kind of locus mentis); conjures an intermediary (both literal and figurative) between the Eleatics and the Socratics; situates Plato’s poetic dialogue in relation to the ancient oral traditions; hints at the power of memory and impression; and offers horses as a remedy for philosophy.

The dialogue is presented in two parts, each composed in a different style and treating of different themes. The first part consists of an interrogation of young Socrates by older philosophers in the conventional dialectic mode. (Plato the creative writer leaves it to the reader to decide whether ‘older’ implies more experienced, or from the past…) The second part is modeled on the abstract, rigorously logical rationalism of Parmenides, the rat-a-tat lines short and sharp. The juxtaposition of two compositional styles mirrors the contrast Plato draws between two schools of thought, exemplified by the elastic Idealism of Socrates and the radical Monism of the Eleatics.

Parmenides (in the account related by Antiphon) questions Socrates on the distinction between ideas in themselves and the things which partake of them, whether ideas are divisible, whether absolute ideas are valid for human things, or fire, or water, and whether the absolute essence of Beauty, the Good or the Just are ultimately knowable at all. Parmenides gives Socrates credit for acknowledging the limits of his idealism and encourages him to continue his philosophical training, to go further and consider not only the consequences which flow from a given hypothesis, but also the consequences which flow from denying the hypothesis. Then Parmenides (via Antiphon) launches into an example of his own philosophical process. Plato gives Parmenides the best lines—

every thing will be like every thing, for every thing is other than every thing

the One will be in number both equal to and more and less than both itself and all other things

the One is always becoming older than itself, since it moves forward in time, but by becoming older than itself, it becomes younger at the same time

—in what reads as almost a parody of Eleatic Monism. Plato’s genius was to present the dialogue in both content and form as a commentary on itself (!). Parmenides is the before, Socrates the after. Parmenides persists as a memory, while his disciples have gone to pasture with their horses.

There are enough suggestive passages here to demonstrate again how the works of Plato launched into the world 1,001 strange and beautiful questions, anticipating Spinoza and Fichte (‘ideas are what they are in relation to each other; their essence is determined by a relation among themselves’), Zen Buddhism (‘can there be individual thoughts which are thoughts of nothing?’), quantum theory (‘the one is beyond time and measure, is both at rest and in motion, is both like and unlike itself’), on and on. ( )

Extremely dense and logical. Difficult to follow, more so than other Platonic dialogues. Recommended for advanced readers only. ( )

Ex nihilo, nihil fit. ( )